New Titles from Smalls Books
Fall 2010
*SMALLS 2009 POETRY BOOK CONTEST WINNER*
Breath into Bone: Poems
J. R. Thelin
"Breath Into Bone is that savviest of books: a coming of age tale that finds its most personal articulations in the public record, in this case, the recent history of popular music. Here we have the legendary alongside the lost, the famous and the has-beens. These poems are wraced with the spendor of power chords and bad haircuts, rim shots and groupies. It's all here: hilarious and devastating and completely authentic. Thelin's poems are his "funny valentine" to a past steeped in the excess of playing and paying attention to the music that matters: jazz, pop, rock and roll and polka. Well, maybe not polka. Breath Into Bone lifts us above the wreckage of lives lost and abandoned, of a past lived gig to gig, of all that we loved well and let go."
--James Harms, author of The Joy Addict and After West
"John Thelin’s sophisticated and lively book reminds us why poetry and music are as necessary as breathing. Taking us from adolescence through adulthood, our narrator weaves his stories with the soundtrack of a Generation always front and center. There are poems here of celebration and loss, a longing to find something like love, playing one perfect note. Poems as brash as the Sex Pistols, hopeful as a garage band or a lone drummer in the basement. Breath Into Bone is one hell of a book of poems, and John Thelin is one hell of a poet."
--Tim Suermondt
The Sleeping with Series: Poems
Christine Timm
"Quiet down, kids, Professor Timm's class is now in session. Here in Poetry for the People 101, you'll learn all the important stuff about the field of verse--the inner lives of the poets, their peccadilloes and trances....Here at last is a fresh voice and a learned one, a dancer with words, a soul voice."
--Bob Holman, Producer of "The United States of Poetry"
Fall 2010
*SMALLS 2009 POETRY BOOK CONTEST WINNER*
Breath into Bone: Poems
J. R. Thelin
"Breath Into Bone is that savviest of books: a coming of age tale that finds its most personal articulations in the public record, in this case, the recent history of popular music. Here we have the legendary alongside the lost, the famous and the has-beens. These poems are wraced with the spendor of power chords and bad haircuts, rim shots and groupies. It's all here: hilarious and devastating and completely authentic. Thelin's poems are his "funny valentine" to a past steeped in the excess of playing and paying attention to the music that matters: jazz, pop, rock and roll and polka. Well, maybe not polka. Breath Into Bone lifts us above the wreckage of lives lost and abandoned, of a past lived gig to gig, of all that we loved well and let go."
--James Harms, author of The Joy Addict and After West
"John Thelin’s sophisticated and lively book reminds us why poetry and music are as necessary as breathing. Taking us from adolescence through adulthood, our narrator weaves his stories with the soundtrack of a Generation always front and center. There are poems here of celebration and loss, a longing to find something like love, playing one perfect note. Poems as brash as the Sex Pistols, hopeful as a garage band or a lone drummer in the basement. Breath Into Bone is one hell of a book of poems, and John Thelin is one hell of a poet."
--Tim Suermondt
The Sleeping with Series: Poems
Christine Timm
"Quiet down, kids, Professor Timm's class is now in session. Here in Poetry for the People 101, you'll learn all the important stuff about the field of verse--the inner lives of the poets, their peccadilloes and trances....Here at last is a fresh voice and a learned one, a dancer with words, a soul voice."
--Bob Holman, Producer of "The United States of Poetry"
